The first and principal thing
in the inner life is to establish a relationship with God, making God
the object with which we relate ourselves, such as the Creator,
Sustainer, Forgiver, Judge, Friend, Father, Mother and Beloved. In
every relationship we must place God before us, and become conscious
of that relationship so that it will no more remain an imagination;
because the first thing a believer does is to imagine. He imagines
that God is the Creator, and tries to believe that God is the
Sustainer, and he makes an effort to think that God is a Friend, and
an attempt to feel that he loves God. But if this imagination is to
become a reality, then exactly as one feels for one's earthly beloved
sympathy, love and attachment, so one must feel the same for God.
However greatly a person may be pious, good or righteous, yet without
this his piety or his goodness is not a reality to him.

The work of the inner
life is to make God a reality, so that He is no more an imagination;
that this relationship that man has with God may seem to him more real
than any other relationship in this world; and when this happens, then
all relationships, however near and dear, become less binding. But at
the same time, a person does not thus become cold; he becomes more
loving. It is the godless man who is cold, impressed by the
selfishness and lovelessness of this world, because he partakes of
those conditions in which he lives. But the one who is in love with
God, the one who has established his relationship with God, his love
becomes living; he is no more cold; he fulfills his duties to those
related to him in this world much more than does the godless man.

Now, as to the way in
which man establishes this relationship, which is the most desirable
to establish with God, what should he imagine? God as Father, as
Creator, as Judge, as Forgiver, as Friend, or as Beloved? The answer
is, that in every capacity of life we must give God the place that is
demanded by the moment.

When, crushed by the
injustice, the coldness of the world, man looks at God, the perfection
of Justice, he is no more agitated, his heart is no more disturbed, he
consoles himself with the justice of God. He places the just God
before him, and by this he learns justice; the sense of justice
awakens in his heart, and he sees things in quite a different light.

When man finds himself in
this world motherless or fatherless, then he thinks that there is the
mother and father in God; and that, even if he were in the presence of
his mother and father, these are only related on the earth. The
Motherhood and Fatherhood of God is the only real relationship. The
mother and father of the earth only reflect a spark of that motherly
and fatherly love which God has in fullness and perfection. Then man
finds that God can forgive, as the parents can forgive the child if he
was in error; then man feels the goodness, kindness, protection,
support, sympathy coming from every side; he learns to feel that it
comes from God, the Father-Mother, through all.

When man pictures God as
Forgiver, he finds that there is not only in this world a strict
justice, but there is love developed also, there is mercy and
compassion, there is that sense of forgiveness; that God is not the
servant of law, as is the judge in this world. He is Master of law. He
judges when He judges; when He forgives He forgives. He has both
powers, He has the power to judge and He has the power to forgive. He
is Judge because He does not close His eyes to anything man does; He
knows, He weighs, and measures, and He returns what is due to man. And
He is Forgiver, because beyond and above His power of justice there is
His great power of love and compassion, which is His very being, which
is His own nature, and therefore it is more, and in greater
proportion, and working with a greater activity than His power of
justice. We, the human beings in this world, if there is a spark of
goodness or kindness in our hearts, avoid judging people. We prefer
forgiving to judging. Forgiving gives us naturally a greater happiness
than taking revenge, unless a man is on quite a different path.

The man who realizes God
as a friend is never lonely in the world, neither in this world nor in
the hereafter. There is always a friend, a friend in the crowd, a
friend in the solitude; or while he is asleep, unconscious of this
outer world, and when he is awake and conscious of it. In both cases
the friend is there in his thought, in his imagination, in his heart,
in his soul.

And the man who makes God
his Beloved, what more does he want? His heart becomes awakened to all
the beauty there is within and without. To him all things appeal,
everything unfolds itself, and it is beauty to his eyes, because God
is all-pervading, in all names and all forms; therefore his Beloved is
never absent. How happy therefore is the one whose Beloved is never
absent, because the whole tragedy of life is the absence of the
beloved; and to one whose Beloved is always there, when he has closed
his eyes the Beloved is within, when he has opened his eyes the
Beloved is without. His every sense perceives the Beloved; his eyes
see Him, his ears hear His voice. When a person arrives at this
realization he, so to speak, lives in the presence of God; then to him
the different forms and beliefs, faiths and communities do not count.
To him God is all-in-all; to him God is everywhere. If he goes to the
Christian church, or to the synagogue, to the Buddhist temple, to the
Hindu shrine, or to the mosque of the Muslim, there is God. In the
wilderness, in the forest, in the crowd, everywhere he sees God.

This shows that the inner
life does not consist in closing the eyes and looking inward. The
inner life is to look outwardly and inwardly, and to find one's
Beloved everywhere. But God cannot be made a Beloved unless the love
element is awakened sufficiently. The one who hates his enemy and
loves his friend cannot call God his Beloved, for he does not know
God. When love comes to its fullness, then one looks at the friend
with affection, on the enemy with forgiveness, on the stranger with
sympathy. There is love in all its aspects expressed when love rises
to its fullness; and it is the fullness of love which is worth
offering to God. It is then that man recognizes in God his Beloved,
his Ideal; and by that, although he rises above the narrow affection
of this world, he is the one who really knows how to love even his
friend. It is the lover of God who knows love when he rises to that
stage of the fullness of love.

The whole imagery of the
Sufi literature in the Persian language, written by great poets, such
as Rumi, Hafiz, and Jami, is the relationship between man as the lover
and God as the Beloved; and when one reads understanding that, and
develops in that affection, then one sees what pictures the mystics
have made and to what note their heart has been tuned. It is not easy
to develop in the heart the love of God, because when one does not see
or realize the object of love one cannot love. God must become
tangible in order that one may love Him, but once a person has
attained to that love he has really entered the journey of the
spiritual path.